<nettime> \\ BALKAN.OS \ A Revolution in Consciousness

[| f | | | 3 <n2o@ggttctttat.com>]

BALKAN.OS  \  A Revolution in  Consciousness  (synopsis)

Oblast  
je pri nas ljudska! - Josip Broz-Tito


This paper examines the short and long term implications from the  erosion
of the nation state and specifically the sovereign model under attack at
the  micro and macro level by both public and private institutions, the
problems  inherent in a supra-statist world government, and the
repercussions of western  civilization's failure to coalesce a viable
global model vis a vis the intrinsically  global ideologies of the East and
Middle East.

|| Drzava

Less than four centuries after mass literacy, a rudimentary mass media, and
religious wars began imploding the world's empires into discrete  nation
states by advancing the cultural and ethnic consciousness of groups of
people, the nation state itself is shaken by its roots, perforated from
within and  without by the transcendental forces of global trade,
communication, and technology, challenging its geopolitical sovereignty and
the identity of its  citizens.

The question is not whether the abstract, imaginary concept of the  nation
state is mutating, but rather what that mutation is, and more importantly
what it can be, what we wish it to be, and the implications thereof.

|| The fallacy of a supra-statist government

The prevailing western dynamic is the enforced march from a planet of
sovereign and authoritarian nation states, to one governed by a  global
scale, authoritarian, supra-statist world government, dominated by "1st
world" economically developed nations, with a mandate for advancing
democracy, "free markets", "free trade", and a homogenous identity modeled
on western  ideals.

The devastating repercussions of similarly authoritarian approaches  may be
noted in the forced modernization of rural Eastern European  communities
during communism, and again, during accession to the European Union.

Rather than transcend and dissolve socio-economic and cultural  borders and
instill common aspirations and sensibilities through careful  consideration
of context --  the age old traditions and customs that are integral to  the
very identity and survival of these communities -- their most cherished
practices  were outlawed, forbidden, and sanctioned, deemed barbaric,
anti-social,  and ultimately incompatible with progress and European
democracy.

Much as the idea that a nation's concerns can be addressed by a state
government is misguided, so the idea that global concerns can be mitigated
by a  supra-statist world government is similarly flawed. It is perpetuated
by the  fallacy that the law backed by a monopoly on force alters human
behaviour in a meaningful and sustainable manner.

A supra-statist world government will not perfect our union, rather,  as
the nation state, it will extend the exploitation of the disenfranchised by
the  privileged, the subjugation of the "undeveloped" by the "developed",
the marginalization of minorities by majorities, the desacralization of
life and the  human experience for illusory and transitory "growth", the
cynical transformation of  the planet into finite capital.

A supra-statist world government will connect everyone to everyone else
symbolically, but erect new, yet more formidably conflated borders,
disappear yet more communities and languages, cultures and customs,
differences  and peculiarities, species and orders, names and bodies.

||   We are two liquids but One substance -- A Revolution in  Consciousness

The actualization of 1+1=1 necessitates an understanding of the  meaning of
+.  We must shift from the illusory pronoun "I" to the real pronouns "I's"
within the "We". We must embrace a global sensibility, awareness and
higher order consciousness that will budge the social, cultural and
ecological dimensions of the global collective toward an appreciation of
our shared purpose and circumstances.

We must transcend the politics of division, forced assimilation and  large
scale, vertical solutions, to an emphatic horizontal flow, diversity and
communality, reciprocal understanding and small scale creation, intrinsic
of all  life.

The small scale is not the problem. It is the solution.

Rather than constrict, crush and conform the rich abundance and infinite
potential of the small scale to the rigidity, inelasticity,  finiteness and
context-less artificiality of the large scale we will extend and explode
the small  scale outward, into all scales, into all worlds, infusing them
with its  effervescence and opulence.

We will grow a poly-scalar, poly-temporal, trans-territorial continuum,
navigable at all scales, intuitively and meaningfully; a world where
everything is intimately entwined,  not for novelty's sake, but towards an
unpredictable, yet dialogical, affective state of being.

We will do so, not to lose ourselves, but to find ourselves.

|| Deklaration

This Is. Revolution.

But a revolution without armies and without uniforms.  A revolution without
rifles, nor tanks.

A revolution not for territory nor votes.  This is a revolution for ideas,
for sentiments and for attitudes.

To paraphrase Che Guevara, the analyst proposes to set in motion a bloody
revolution in the patient's emotional life, but guided by  feelings of
love.

It is a slow process. An imperceptibly slow process.  And a painful
process, for all births are painful.

This Is a Birth.

It is spooky action at a distance. Quantum entanglement. Phylotik
kontinuum.  Commensal symbiosis and Sustainable ecstasy.

It is the small scale infusion of the large scale with a higher order
consciousness.  A consciousness so deep that it will become a
predisposition.

This is the path across the solipsistic gulf; Where when one arrives, one
knows that the future, has joined with the past to make a circle ...
outside time.

This is

A Revolution in Consciousness.

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